


May As Well Have Never Been

by Mireille



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Written Pre-Half Blood Prince
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-02-24
Updated: 2004-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 05:02:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13780275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: Charlie would always think of the summer of 1995 as the summer Bill's letters stopped saying anything.





	May As Well Have Never Been

The rest of Charlie's family would remember the summer of 1995 as the summer the war started--even if it was another year before it was officially declared--but Charlie would always think of it as the summer Bill's letters stopped saying anything.

He'd had one proper letter after Bill went back to England, eight pages of Bill's cramped, precise script filled with every minute detail Bill could fit on the parchment, but the next letter after that had barely filled a single sheet of parchment, and all the later ones had been just as short. Charlie's letters back had been the usual long, rambling things, ending only when he doubted he could fit an envelope around another page, and signed, as they'd been signed since he was sixteen and Bill had first left Hogwarts, "Yours, Charlie."  _Your Charlie_ , it used to mean, scandalous truth hidden behind formula and formality.

It still meant that now, only Bill didn't seem to care.

After the third or fourth letter from Bill that said absolutely nothing--it had rained, the twins were driving Mum mad, work was all right, he missed Egypt--Charlie got a letter from his mother. Among veiled references to how worried she was about what was happening with You Know Who, and despair over the situation between Percy and their father, there was one fairly cheerful paragraph:  _Bill's settling in well in England, and I'm quite glad. He's started seeing a girl who works at Gringotts; she's French--you might remember her, in fact, she was one of the champions in the Tournament last year.... Well, I don't mind saying that eased my mind a bit; it's past time he settled down, and he never used to write home about any girls, and with his hair, and that earring, I'm sure you can see why I'd started to wonder about him...._

That was almost funny, to be honest, because Bill had been the one who'd had girlfriend after girlfriend all through school, and Charlie had spent his school years sneaking around with boys from his Muggle Studies class and his Quidditch team, trying not to wish they were Bill. But Charlie had played Quidditch, and Charlie's hair was short because long hair got singed around dragons, and that was apparently enough to reassure his mother.

Almost funny, but not quite, because Bill had a girlfriend, and Bill had stopped writing Charlie letters that said anything at all, and while the signatures on Bill's letters had never been very consistent--ranging from "Love, Bill," to "Take care, Bill," to simply "B."--for the past few weeks, they'd all been signed "Your brother, Bill," as though Bill were trying to remind Charlie of that. As though he were trying to remind himself of that, maybe.

And that wasn't funny at all.

Professor Dumbledore had written to Charlie as well, wanting to make sure he understood the situation, and asking for his help. Charlie had written back, explaining at length how helpful it would be to have someone in Eastern Europe (since Durmstrang was more or less synonymous with the Dark Arts, and He Who Must Not Be Named had apparently been hiding somewhere here a few years back), and trying to keep his desperate need to stay away from England--away from Bill and Bill's girlfriend and the unbearable coolness in Bill's letters--off the page.

Whether he'd been successful or not, he didn't know, but Dumbledore had agreed and hadn't asked uncomfortable questions, and that was enough for Charlie. He wouldn't have to go back.

He wouldn't ever go back. Not to see Bill get married, not to see the nephews and nieces he was sure he'd have, not for anything, not ever, not if it meant seeing Bill. Not if it meant replacing the Bill in his head, the one who he could still feel curled around him in bed at night if he closed his eyes and wished hard enough, with this distant stranger.

No, not a stranger. This was what they were supposed to be all along, Charlie reminded himself; fond of each other, but not as close as they'd been. Not as close as they'd always been, even when they were small, even before Charlie had realized that he wasn't supposed to want to marry Bill when he grew up, before he'd spent five years of school watching Bill out of the corner of his eye in the common room, before the unimaginable had happened and Bill had come to find him in Romania.

He'd be all right with it, he told himself; it was just difficult because there was no one he could talk to about it. He'd lost his lover and his best friend and his beloved big brother all at once, all to a girl who was too young for Bill in the first place, in Charlie's opinion; she couldn't be much older than the twins, and Charlie couldn't think of his little brothers as anything like adults. But he'd get over it, and he'd be all right, as long as he never had to see Bill again.

And it almost worked; he almost got used to hurting over Bill, the way he was used to the way the shoulder he'd broken the first time he tried the Wronski Feint ached when it rained. Summer slid into September, and then October; then November came around, wet and grey and cold, and Charlie was drowsing by the fire in his flat when Bill Apparated straight into his living room. Basic wizarding etiquette dictated going to the doorstep and knocking, but they'd never done that with each other. Bill had been free to treat Charlie's flat as his own, and Charlie had done the same with Bill's house in Egypt.

Charlie looked up with a start, and for a second, he almost let himself forget the past few months, to pretend that Bill had just been preoccupied.

"Charlie--" Bill began, and Charlie was out of his chair in an instant, his arms around Bill. Instinctively, Bill's arms wrapped around him, just for a second before Bill caught himself and took a step backward, shaking his head. "Charlie, no."

Charlie stepped back as well--reeled backward, more like, because Bill was backing away from him, and that was strange and unnerving and painful as hell. "Why are you here, then?" he demanded, trying to make his voice as hard and cold as he could, and afraid he sounded more like a petulant child.

"I thought you deserved an explanation."

"I deserve--" He deserved Bill, damn it. This had been Bill's doing; Charlie would have stayed away from him forever, if that had been what Bill had wanted. But Bill had come to him, and it wasn't fair that Bill should suddenly decide it had been a bad idea, that Bill should have given Charlie the only thing he'd ever really wanted and then snatch it away again.

Charlie shook his head. "Do you love her?"

"How do you... Mum, of course," Bill murmured. "I might have known."

"Do you love her?" he repeated. He wasn't sure if that would make it better or worse, if he'd rather have Bill choose to be with someone else solely because he was ashamed (or afraid, or however Bill would describe it) of what he'd had with Charlie, or if it'd be easier to know that Bill, at least, was happy and in love.

"It doesn't matter," Bill said, and Charlie wasn't sure if that meant "yes" or "no."

Charlie took another step back, closer to the fire; he was suddenly freezing. "What does matter?"

"I'm back in England," Bill said. "I'm staying in England, especially since Percy--well, Mum and Dad can't rely on him now. They need someone, they need me to be there. And I can't--they'll find out, Charlie, they'll know."

"They won't. I'm here, I'm not coming back, I like it here--and if I had to come back, it'd be Wales or Scotland, where at least there are dragons. You'll visit me, just like always, and we'll behave ourselves when I come back for visits, like always, and they'll never know."

"I can't," Bill said again. "Charlie, you know it's wrong, you know...."

Charlie glared at him. "Of course I know. No one would ever understand how we feel about each other. But we could die tomorrow, either or both of us. We could all be dead tomorrow, or You Know Who could win and we'd be worse than dead, and you'd have thrown away the best thing we ever had because you're afraid." He nearly spat the final word.

"Because it's wrong. Aren't we supposed to be the good guys?"

He shook his head. "Tell me you're not saying that being in love with you puts me on the same level as the Death Eaters."

"I'm not saying anything, Charlie, it's just--it's not right, it's never been right, and no matter how much I love you--"

"You do, then?" Charlie knew he should have just let Bill talk, but he couldn't help himself, not when his heart was suddenly in his throat, and he could feel, even for just a second, a flash of hope.

Bill ignored the interruption. "--it's never going to be right. And she's not you, Charlie, she's nothing like you, but she's beautiful and she's clever and she's talented, and she loves me, and... and she's nothing like you, and that makes it easier."

"And she's a girl, and Mum approves of her, and she's not your brother, and fuck you, William Weasley, you might have thought of this when I was twenty, and not when I've spent most of my life with the wrong idea of what you felt for me." He jammed his hands deep into the pockets of his robes, clenching them tightly into fists, and told himself that a man who could face down dragons wasn't going to let something like this make him break down in public. And then he flinched, because he'd never thought of being around just Bill as being in public, before; he'd never worried about what Bill would think of him.

Maybe, he thought miserably, he should have.

"You didn't have the wrong idea, Charlie, I just can't do it any more. I can't take hiding, I can't take only seeing you now and then, I can't take risking that we'll be found out...." Bill's voice was shaking, and Charlie believed him. He couldn't do anything but believe him; it was Bill, and he couldn't help it. He'd trusted Bill since before he'd learned to walk; he couldn't stop just because Bill was breaking his heart.

"Then don't," Charlie said softly. "We'll go away. When this is all over, we'll go away, somewhere no one knows us. I'll charm my hair brown, we'll change our names, and no one will ever have to know. We'll have earned the right to disappear, after what's happening now."

Bill was silent for a long moment before whispering, "Just disappear?"

"Live as Muggles, even, if you want. No one will ever know it's us."

He nodded, wordlessly, and Charlie grinned at him. "Perfect. Now you'd better go; someone will wonder where you've got to."

A faint smile, and Bill said, "You have to live through all this now, you know."

"I know. So do you."

Bill stepped closer to him then, kissing him once before disapparating without another word, and Charlie went back to sitting by the fire, though he was smiling to himself a little. It would all sort itself out; Charlie knew it would.

When the letters from Bill started coming again, pages long and signed "Love, Bill," he was sure of it.

He stopped being so certain several weeks later, when he got the owl from his mother (and one from George, and even one from his father, who usually left the letter-writing to the rest of the family) all expressing concern about the number of risks Bill was suddenly taking, the recklessness with which he'd started approaching missions for the Order, and Charlie realized that it was his fault.

There wasn't going to be an "after the war," not for Bill. No matter what he'd said to Charlie, he'd decided he couldn't handle it, couldn't face it. And as much as Charlie hated that, he couldn't blame Bill, not really. If Charlie had had a choice--if he thought he could ever want anyone besides Bill--he might have felt the same way.

Charlie had never thought of himself as a coward; he was a Gryffindor and a dragon-tamer, after all, but the difficulty with which he picked up a quill to answer Bill's latest letter made him reconsider that. They were only words, he told himself, and there was no reason for him to be afraid of them.

But they felt like they were the end of everything, instead of just the end of something that should never have been allowed to begin in the first place, and as he wrote a quick, dry note about the Longhorn hatchlings at the reservation and what a cold February it had been, he couldn't stop his hand from shaking, making his handwriting even less legible than it ordinarily was.

And when he reached the end of the page, and signed the letter "Your brother, Charlie," he had to shove the parchment away quickly so that his tears wouldn't blur the ink.

**Author's Note:**

> [me on tumblr](https://mireille719.tumblr.com)


End file.
